


Gravity

by Anonymous



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Blood and Injury, Brimel, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Injury, M/M, Major Character Injury, Misunderstandings, Soulmates, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22644220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: (Kink Meme Prompt Fill) AU: The first thing that your soulmate thinks about you when you first meet is written somewhere on your body.JT has always been a little mystified by his mark, until he meets Malcolm and eventually realizes the profiler is his soulmate.Tags for: Soulmate!AU, MxM, H/C, whump, suicidal thoughts and behavior, major character injuries, canon-typical violence and mild language.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Malcolm Bright & JT Tarmel, Malcolm Bright/JT Tarmel
Comments: 6
Kudos: 223
Collections: Prodigal Son Kink Meme - Anonymous





	Gravity

JT stares at his arm, watching the scroll of shifting letters. Sometimes it changes slowly, like he’s reading a page underwater. Other times—like now—the words shift and spin faster than his eyes can follow. 

_ He’s huge. Why is he angry? Is he angry? Maybe that’s just his face. Holy shit he looked at me. Look busy. Is that brain matter?  _

“You okay, Tarmel?” Ward shuffles around the corner, down the row of locker in heavy boots.

JT quickly pulls his sleeve down, forcing a smile he doesn’t feel.

“Yeah, long day.”

Ward hums out a non-committal noise and spins the dial on his lock, popping open his locker and humming tonelessly to himself as he strips off his gear.

_ Malcolm Bright is my soulmate _ , JT thinks blankly to himself. 

He sits down on the bench in front of the lockers, slowly untying his boots. It’s busy work, he usually just pries them off and tosses them in the vented metal drawer under his locker. Today, he could use the distraction.

If he’s really being honest, he never thought this day would come. He’s been living in limbo for so long, frozen in place, playing the waiting game with no finish line in sight. 

It’s surreal and more than a little terrifying to realize that today, for the first time, he met the person whose words he’s been reading his entire life. His soulmate.

And his soulmate is a profiler. He’s  _ Bright _ . All wound-up energy and shaky hands and self-deprecating smiles. He’s blue eyes and soft lips and thin shoulders and— 

And a man.

JT had always suspected as much. Watching those shapes and letters chase each other like lines of marching ants across his skin for a few decades clued him in to that. But now he knows for sure. It’s real. Immutable and tactile.

He doesn’t have the first clue what to do next.

.

Malcolm sits on the barstool under the kitchen light, the only illumination in the dark apartment. Stares at the inside of his wrist like he can make it make sense.

Years have passed and those words have stared out at him like a mockery. False hope.

He remembers pressing a silver knife blade against them once, his hands shaking, his head spinning. Unknowing if he wanted to carve them out of his skin until there was nothing left to see… or if he wanted to carve himself out. Drain away into a blissful darkness where he didn’t have to worry constantly about  _ fate  _ and soulmates and things out of his control.

Everything is out of his control.

He’s heard similar words, read similar thought patterns before. So many times. Stared at somebody a little too long as he tried to recognize their eyes, silently begging a dispassionate universe to finally see that spark of understanding that meant they recognized him, too. Tried to fit square pegs into round holes and cursed whatever sick joke of the universe was making it all so difficult.

But today, he saw something. It hurt a little, like getting shocked by an electric fence and feeling your entire body jolt. Like so many things in his life It was less physical than mental. Less real than subliminal. 

He doubts himself, doesn’t trust his head not to cave into his aching heart and do that again. Make something out of nothing. Try to force something that isn’t there.

_ Damn, his eyes are blue. _

Malcolm tries to smile as he looks down at the words, can’t manage anything until he imagines JT saying them in his deep voice. 

There it is. That little flutter of recognition. A spark he’s forced himself to feel so many times before, pretending it was real.

Somehow, it doesn’t feel forced this time.

He doesn’t know if the idea scares him or gives him hope. Doesn’t know if he even remembers what hope feels like. 

.

  
  


“Hey, can I—can I talk to you real quick?”

JT sniffs, scratches at his neck, tries to shake off the nervous energy hanging on his shoulders.

“Sure.” Malcolm gives in easily, his eyebrows raising in surprise. He follows JT down the hall, into a long empty boardroom with a glass wall overlooking the city.

“This is gonna sound crazy,” JT half-laughs into the emptiness, pacing by the window with his hands in his pockets. 

“You’re my soulmate.”

JT stares at the kid, his feet stilling in their restless movement.

“Yeah,” he breathes, feeling like he just had all the air knocked out of him.

Malcolm stares at the window, the colors reflecting in his eyes like a movie screen. 

JT thinks maybe his breathlessness has a little more to do with those eyes than anything else. The first thing he saw when Bright walked into the room. The only thing he could bring himself to focus on from that moment on.

“What now?” 

“Honestly?” Bright smiles at him, and there’s a sad edge to it the cop doesn’t like. “I have no idea.”

“They don’t exactly prepare you for this shit in school. Or anywhere.” JT shakes his head, standing next to Bright and joining him as they both stare out at the city.

He can’t shake that nagging discomfort, knowing that Malcolm probably came to this conclusion a hell of a lot quicker than he did. That he was watching him, analyzing and reading and unfolding the edges like a kid peeking at a Christmas present without permission.

It doesn’t sit right. In fact it’s downright irritating when he thinks about it that way.

What did he have, besides words on his arm like a curse? Changing and shifting a hundred times a day, like a teasing glimpse of what might be insight into the person on the other end, if he was only smart enough to decipher it.

And then there’s Bright, who has spent his entire life reading people, digging into their brains and rummaging around like a human mind is nothing more than an old box of junk in someone’s attic. Waiting to be picked apart, the ugly things discarded and tossed away.

“Well?” JT pushes, hating himself for it because he should be brave enough to meet this head-on. He should be doing something, saying something. At the very least, trying to make this a little less uncomfortable for them both.

“I don’t know what to say,” Malcolm mutters at the floor. 

JT lifts his shoulders helplessly, feeling like he just hit a wall.

“Well I guess there ain’t any rules.” He thinks out loud, his eyebrows furrowing as he tries to puzzle it all out in a way that makes sense. 

“Not any written ones, anyways,” Bright retorts, and it’s almost too quiet to catch. 

There are rules. Sacred, unspoken, loosely-bound things that everyone seems to know.  _ Everyone  _ of course, being the people who were lucky enough to bump into their soulmate in a high school gym or at a cash register somewhere, like the gravity of the universe drew them together.

It’s so easy, for so many people.

Why does it have to be so difficult for them?   
  


“I know we didn’t exactly get off right,” JT feels the need to half-apologize, an ugly shell of what he really wants to say. “But that’s probably my fault.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Malcolm finally turns towards him, and his eyes are earnest, glowing. “I rub people the wrong way, I do it all the time. I’m not exactly…”

JT waits for him to finish, feeling his eyebrows raise as he holds his breath.    
  


“I don’t know.” Frustrated, Malcolm rubs his face with both hands, his body twisting like he’s struggling to hold it all in.

“It’s okay,” JT feels the need to comfort him, maybe even a niggle of something a little too much like pity. “I get it. I’m not exactly a bundle of sunshine myself.”

“I have a bird named sunshine,” the profiler blurts out, a real smile splitting his face. “I know that’s crazy, but he’s kind of like—he keeps me sane sometimes, you know.”

JT tries not to look as taken aback by that spontaneous statement as he feels. “That’s cool. Birds are cool.”

Silence wedges between them again, too awkward. Charged with energy.

“Do you think we should we tell the team?”

“That’s your call,” the cop sighs, secretly hoping Malcolm will avoid doing just that, at least for now. Selfishly, he doesn’t think he’s equipped to handle that on top of everything else. “Maybe we just—take it slow. Kinda figure this out. See where it goes.”

“Do you want it to? Go somewhere?”

That’s the real question, isn’t it?

JT has always hated the idea of some kind of predetermined fate, that he doesn’t have a choice or a chance in any of this. That somewhere out there,  _ his person was _ waiting for him to find them, to walk up and introduce himself and finish off the happy little fairy tale.

But that’s not him. He doesn’t feel ready, doesn’t feel like he’s remotely prepared to face the scale of this discovery. 

For starters, he wouldn’t exactly consider himself prime dating material; hell, he spends most of his time at work or sitting on a barstool with his team. He’s a blue-collar ex-soldier with a chip on his shoulder and Malcolm is, well… he’s Malcolm. Expensive suits and fancy degrees and shaking hands.

“We got a lot to figure out here,” he opts for the middle ground. The easy out. “Maybe we just take it one day at a time, and not make any promises to each other we can’t keep.”

Malcolm’s face falls, and the cop instantly feels like a dick. But the profiler covers quickly, schooling his features back under control, hiding behind that strange smile that doesn’t look remotely real but pretends to be.

“Fair enough.”

**.**

Gil gives Malcolm JT’s number, doesn’t bother asking why he wants it. That might have something to do with the strategic timing, Malcolm asking for the team’s numbers collectively so he can shoot off some photos of the crime scene he snapped on his phone.

He texts JT, a bare “here’s my number” and no further explanation because he has a million things to say but doesn’t know where to start.

The cop didn’t seem thrilled about the prospect of getting to know each other and that’s mindlessly terrifying, seizing up in his lungs like breathing in chloroform. 

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do if JT brushes him off and walks the other way, leaving the infinite possibilities hanging between them like broken strings.

He’s been waiting for so long. Holding on for so long, telling himself there was a  _ someday _ coming, a time when things would get better and he’d finally have someone to remind him what it felt like to not be so damn alone all the time. A strong hand to reach into his tumultuous ocean and drag him out, teach him how to swim or at least float above it all while the storm rages.

He’s so damn lonely.

If JT walks away, he thinks his hope will go with him. The little spark he’s been holding onto his whole life for this moment, like a precious stone he can warm up in his hands and bring to life. 

There’s still time, he thinks. Still time to fix it, to make a good impression, to seem a little less crazy than he’s sure the cop thinks he is.

A cop. Huh. Out of all the possibilities, somehow that’s what surprises him.

He never knew what would happen, who would end up on the other end of those words. Because anybody could tell him his eyes are blue, and he'd smile and say thank you and try to be polite, but he’s heard it a million times. It never meant anything.

But then he thinks about JT, and the words coming out of him, from his lips, and it makes his stomach flutter and his heart tighten up like there’s a fist in his chest, wrapped around his heart and squeezing.

JT doesn’t answer his text, or at least he doesn’t do it in the first five minutes. So instead Malcolm calls Gil, because he thinks if he has to hold this in for another second he might actually explode.

Malcolm asks if he can come over, and Gil sounds a little surprised but he would never say no.

Malcolm shows up at his front door with a bottle of wine he brought with him from DC and a wrinkled tie. He takes one look at the older man’s face, watches that genuine smile break across his face and light up his eyes.

He feels himself crumple right there on the porch, the flimsy framework of strength he’s built up inside himself snapping like toothpicks.

“Hey, come here kid,” Gil mutters soothingly, pulling him into a hug right there on the spot.

Malcolm grabs him back, twists his fingers into his soft sweater and breathes.

“What happened?” Gil asks as he ushers him inside.

“Gil.” Malcolm breathes, setting the bottle down on the dining room table and pulling at his hair like he can rip it right out of his head and make all of this make sense. “I’m sorry, I know this is sudden, I just… I need your advice.”

“Talk to me,” Gil is frowning, showing all the concern and care and  _ love that _ Malcolm always hoped he’d see in somebody else’s eyes someday.

Somebody who has Malcolm’s words on their skin, who wants him the same way he so desperately, achingly wants them. Whoever they were. Or are.

“I think I found them,” he says when he gets his bearings again, standing in Gil’s kitchen feeling impossibly small and lost. “My soulmate.”

Understanding dawns across Gil’s eyes, flickering quickly and briefly. He knows how much this means to him, he’s talked about it with him a thousand times before. He doesn’t interrupt.

“And now, I’m just not sure if they want anything to do with me.”

“They’d be crazy not to,” Gil says like he believes it. Like he’s holding all of the confidence and certainty the profiler has never felt. 

Malcolm looks at him, dreading this. Changing everything, the entire dynamic of a team he so badly wants to belong on, to succeed in. To not mess up like he does so many other things.

“Judging by your face right now,” Gil says slowly, “I’m guessing it’s somebody I know.”

“It is.”

**.**

  
  


“Hold on, shit, hold on—”

JT listens to his own breath, too fast, too harsh. He presses both hands against the gaping wound in Malcolm’s thigh and tries to calm down.

They’re crouched behind one of the undercover cars in the middle of the street; little pops of gunfire still cracking through the air. 

It all went to shit so fast. It always does.

“I’m good,” Bright says, and it’s a terrible lie. His slick hands are pressed over JT’s, shaking. His eyes are distant and glazed. 

“The fuck you are.” JT still feels too breathless, his heart racing a hundred miles an hour like it’s trying to burst out of his chest. “Just stay awake, they’re gonna clear the building and we can get you out of here.”

It’s wishful thinking; they’re too far away. The ambulance crew staging down the road, because there’s no use having paramedics bleeding out in the street right along with them. Until they neutralize the gunman, they’re on their own.

The blood won’t stop. It’s been years since his last combat medicine course, but JT thinks he knows an arterial bleed when he sees one. That knowledge doesn’t help, doesn’t do anything to quash the panic clawing out of him. He wishes desperately that he had something—anything—on hand to help. Combat gauze, quick clot, a tourniquet. Anything but the vest he hastily threw on over his hoodie, the useless gun on his hip. 

The shots started as they were crossing the street. JT watched Malcolm crumple like a house of cards, and before he caught his breath he was moving on autopilot, dragging him behind the nearest cover. And now they’re stuck out here, pinned down. Too far away from the nearest building, the nearest corner they might be able to run to for better protection.

JT looks over his shoulder, sees Gil crouched behind the next car. He’s not close enough to help either. 

“What’s his status,” Gil yells across to him. JT can hear the stress in his voice, the near-panic.

“He’s fine,” JT calls back, because the last thing he needs to do is say something that will put Gil in the line of fire, too. He can only handle one crisis at a time right now, and the profiler bleeding under his hands is definitely taking up his full attention.

“Don’t,” JT warns as he watched Malcolm’s eyes start sliding shut, shaking him with one hand. “You’re gonna be okay, just—stay awake. Goddammit Bright!”

The bullet is still in there. Still clogging the wound, and it’s maybe the only thing keeping Malcolm alive. 

“Update from Tac,” JT barks into his radio. If his voice is a little too high, his words a little too rushed, nobody is about to call him out on it. 

“Breaching a barricade on the fourth floor,” a voice crackles back. JT can hear the sound of the battering ram in the background.

JT bites his lip and forces himself not to snap back with  _ hurry up goddammit. _ It wouldn’t do any good, wouldn’t change anything. 

A matter of minutes have passed since Malcolm was shot, and it feels like a year. 

“Keep pressure for me,” JT commands, because he doesn’t really need Bright's help but the kid needs something to focus on. A job to do. “I need your help, you hear me? Press hard.”

Bright pulls a bloody lip between his teeth and bites down, his tremoring hands obediently increasing pressure over JT’s.

“That’s it,” the cop tries to hide the relief in his voice. “Just like that. Keep it up, we got medics 60 seconds away. Soon as they clear the shooter out, we’re getting you out of here.

The gunfire stops, and JT’s heartbeat notches up. That could mean anything. The shooter could be moving positions. Could be engaging with entry teams. He could be taking an aimed shot on an exposed target. 

JT glances around the empty street, squinting in the bright sunlight. Gil’s covered. They’re covered. The other cops are too far away to be targets, and the ambulance siren down the street has gone quiet. 

“Talk to me, please.” JT isn’t ashamed to beg, not now. 

He’s ashamed of how scared he is. Ashamed that all he can think about is how much he regrets the way they met. About how he finally met someone he’s been waiting for his whole life, and his own pride and ego made him cold. Standoffish and removed.

He hasn’t even asked Bright how he feels about all this. Hasn’t done anything except push away without knowing why.

“What do you want me to talk about,” Bright slurs, and JT feels his heart clench because the kid is trying so damn hard. Trying to listen, to make JT feel better.

“When did you first see it?” The cop asks, because he might never be brave enough to ask again. “The words.”

“When I was fourteen, the profiler’s eyebrows pull together. He takes it all in stride. “I just—I was in a bad place. I wanted to go.”

JT feels the air leave his lungs. 

“I saw the ink and—I thought maybe I’d have a chance after all. A chance to not be—alone.” Malcolm’s body shudders, lines of pain pulling across his forehead, pulling at his lips.

“I saw them around the same age,” JT admits to distract him, his heart rate slowing. “I wanted so badly to know who you were. And then they—they kept changing.

Malcolm’s blue eyes are shaded slivers, he looks up with a frown of confusion.

“Yeah. They change all the time. Sometimes faster than I can read them. Used to stay up all night reading them, like an idiot.” It’s the first time JT has ever said it out loud.

“I’ve never—I didn’t know they changed.”

“Honestly? They don’t. I asked. All the time, everyone I met. Nobody’s ever heard of the marks changing like that. “

“What does that mean?”

JT huffs out a breath, his shoulders drooping. “I have no idea.”

“Clear!” The voice crackles across the radio. JT feels something in him break.

“One in custody.”

“Get that ambulance in here, now!” JT yells into his radio. 

“If I live—can I see it?”

JT looks down at Malcolm, and he thinks he must look pretty wrecked because Bright cracks a smile at him, his bloody hand coming up to grasp the cop’s wrist like he thinks he needs to comfort him.

“When you live,” JT chokes out. “ _ When _ .”

Gil takes a chance in the silence and sprints over to them, shoving his sidearm into his hip holster.

“Goddamit, kid,” the older cop breathes, his face crumpling at the sight of the pool of blood they’re kneeling in.

He helps JT put pressure on the wound, peeling off his vest and sweater to use as a makeshift bandage.

“Stay awake,” JT says again uselessly, feeling like he’s run his course here. Done all he can do. He rocks back on his heels, staring down at his hands as Gil takes over. 

They’re covered in blood. 

He practices breathing, keeps himself together until the ambulance pulls up and the paramedics spill out with bright red bags. 

Gil grabs him and pulls him away, lets the ambulance crew have room to work, to do for Bright what they couldn’t.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Gil is saying, and it takes a beat too long for JT to realize the lieutenant is talking to him.

“Gil, I need to tell you—” JT chokes out, his hands drifting uselessly.

“I know,” Gil says, “I know.”

Gil grabs onto him. Crushes him. JT holds him back and hopes he isn’t crying, but he can't tell.

“I’ll drive you to the hospital,” Gil offers.

JT nods mutely and follows him to the car.

**.**

“I’m fine,” Malcolm is repeating over and over again. He’s sitting up in bed, a massive bandage stark-white around his thigh while the nurses buzz. 

“Can you just cooperate, for like two minutes?” Gil gripes as he enters, coffee in hand. 

JT trails behind, feeling awkward. He watches the older cop—Malcolm’s surrogate father, for all intents and purposes—cross the room and grip the kid’s shoulder with a warm smile. 

He feels out of place, uncomfortable and too-warm as his mind spins. He’s cleaned up, changed his clothes and washed off the caked blood. Feels more like himself, and as his mind calms his anxiety mounts.

Whatever happens now, he knows he couldn’t possibly be anywhere else. He can’t leave Bright here alone, with so many questions and uncertainties hanging between them. 

“I think you two have some things to talk about,” Gil says, patting JT on the back as he leaves.

JT forces out a terse smile, waits for the nurses to vacate the room before he gets up the courage to look at Malcolm.

“Can I hug you,” he asks, hoping he’s not overstepping. 

Malcolm’s face does that strange thing, where he falls apart and pulls himself back together in the space of heartbeat. 

“Please,” he says.

JT steps forward, wraps his arms around Malcolm and the kid hugs him back. It’s more than that, it’s strong and intimate and full of emotion. The first time they’ve touched when it wasn’t life or death hanging between them.

JT drops his head on top of the profiler’s hair, let’s himself feel for the first time in days. The kid smells good, somehow, despite being drenched in blood and sweat and grime a few hours ago.

“I didn’t know if you’d want to see me, or talk to me, or—”

“Shut up,” JT breathes, because he can’t physically handle listening to Malcolm tear himself apart. “I was being stupid. So fucking stupid.”

He pulls back, let’s Malcolm hang onto his arm because the kid looks like he really needs the contact right now.

“The truth is I just wanted something to be my choice, you know? I got so caught up in this idea of fate and destiny and everything being decided for me, I just thought—I just thought I wanted it to be my choice. Like this would somehow be a bad thing.”

It’s still your choice,” Malcolm says, and it’s weak and unsure. “You don’t have to… you know. Nothing has to be set in stone.

“Yeah but here I wasn’t even willing to give you a chance… why?” JT is immeasurably frustrated with himself “Because of my own stupid pride, because I’m too stubborn to believe life could ever give me something good? I’m an idiot.”

“Me too,” Malcolm says, looking down. “I used to feel that way too. First I was angry that I didn’t get to make my own decisions, because I’ve never really had control over anything in my life and I just wanted control over this…”

JT swallows hard. Wishes he’d known, so many things.

“But eventually it became something… else. Like a lifeline. You were my reason to stay alive a long time before I ever met you.”

JT squeezes Malcolm’s arm, because his throat is tight and he doesn’t know what to say that will measure up to what he’s hearing.

“And I guess know you literally kept me alive. So, thank you.”

“No need to thank me,” JT shakes his head, trying to wrap his mind around all of this. “Just, let me make it up to you. Let me try.”

Malcolm smiles, a real one this time. Blue eyes light up like an ocean of stars.

“I’d like that.”

.

Two weeks later, JT and Malcolm sit at the little coffee shop on Broadway where the profiler likes to drag him when he can’t sleep and his mind is buzzing.

JT’s never been much of a coffee shop guy. Always thought they were a place for hipsters and college kids. Gas station joe was always good enough for him, or the burnt sludge the Detectives brew up at the precinct every morning.

He thinks he could get used to being wrong.

Malcolm is wearing a light grey sweater and has his bad leg stretched out on the couch beside him. He’s buried in a thick book and his eyes are moving a mile a minute over the pages. JT knows by now the kid is a speed-reader, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to seeing it in action.

The cop has a laptop in front of him, and he’s reading up on some old reports for an upcoming court case but he’s only half paying attention.

Instead, he’s doing something he doesn’t think he’s let himself do in years.

He’s basking. Enjoying just sitting in this quiet space, in the white background noise of hushed voices and music drifting over the speakers.

He has a caramel bullshit latte sitting in front of him that he let Bright order, and secretly loves, and he has his soulmate sitting across from him. Alive. Happy.

It’s been two weeks since Malcolm was shot, and they haven't spent much of it apart.

Things fell into place between them so easily, once JT swallowed his pride and just let it happen. Stopped fighting and gave himself a chance to be happy. And they fell into each other like gravity, smoothing over rough edges and discovering what it really means to be two halves of a whole. It's easy, almost too easy. It's natural.   


They have their moments, of course they do. Little misunderstandings, because Malcolm’s an overthinker and JT’s still the same old asshole he’s always been, but they manage to move past it quickly.

Now they lie awake at night. Malcolm traces the ink on the cop’s wrist and watches the words change and blushes a little as he watches his own intimate thoughts laid out on display. 

JT loves to watch him. 

Loves to drift in the silence and stare at those eerie eyes and JT’s ink on a pale wrist, and he falls asleep next to his soulmate thinking

_ Damn, his eyes are blue. _


End file.
